Quiet Buffalo Community In Shock After Crash
Friday February 13, 2009
CityNews.ca Staff
It was the last thing they ever expected in their quiet out of the
way area. When a plane fell out of the sky and onto one of the houses
in their neighbourhood, many residents of Clarence, New York, simply refused to believe what happened.
Some thought it was an explosion. Others just bad weather. It wasn't
until people started coming out of their homes in the Thursday night
darkness that they discovered the terrible truth: a Continental
turboprop crashed into a house around 10:20pm, bursting into flames and
destroying the home.
All 49 on board and one resident on the ground were killed.
It took hours for crews to gain the upper hand on the fire and few got
any sleep as the flames raged and sirens blared at the scene.
Many streamed out of their homes into the wintry snow-sleet mix to
witness the disaster first hand after hearing the unexplained sounds
inside their houses. "We heard a noise for about five, six seconds and
felt it explode," explains one resident
"It sounded like the engine was sputtering," adds another. "The next
thing it cut out. You could hear it hit and a big ball of flame."
Kathy Dworak rushed out to see a huge fireball near her property.
"It was nighttime but it looked like dawn because the flames were so
big, and so intense," she recalls.
"You couldn't see any signs of the plane when we got there," adds
Bob Dworak. "It was just a giant fire probably 50 to 100 feet tall."
Tony Tatro was one of the first to call 911. "It was like watching a
bad movie," he relates. "You feel hopeless. There's nothing that you
can do."
One horribly tragic irony here was that there was a widow of a 9/11 victim who was on one of those planes then, that ended up being one of the dead here :(
inu-liger wrote:
One horribly tragic irony here was that there was a widow of a 9/11 victim who was on one of those planes then, that ended up being one of the dead here :(
It's like bad fiction where everything happens to the heroine - she wasn't just the widow of a 911 victim, she was on the phone with her husband as the south tower collapsed and killed him, she met with President Obama a few days ago, and she was on her fateful way to Buffalo to meet with her late husband's family where they were going to "celebrate" his birthday. As if that's not enough, she was scheduled to address a local school where her husband was being honored with a scholarship in his name.
Maybe the real tragedy is that everyone is talking about her and not the other poor souls - in the plane and on the ground - who died along with her. And all this, it seems, was due to simple ice buildup on the wings. You'd think with today's technology, they'd know how to properly - quickly and thoroughly - de-ice all the vital areas of an aircraft.
how tragic, and terrifying. i wish their families the best. some things cant be stopped, but they do have machines to get ride of ice buildup. i imagine it was built up in in air or something :-/